Cloud computing involves sharing of computing resources that are generally accessed via the Internet. In particular, the cloud computing infrastructure allows users, such as individuals and/or enterprises, to access a shared pool of computing resources, such as servers, storage devices, networks, applications, and/or other computing based services. By doing so, users are able to access computing resources located at remote locations in an “on demand” fashion in order to perform a variety computing functions that include storing and/or processing computing data. For enterprise and other organizational users, cloud computing provides flexibility in accessing cloud computing resources without accruing excessive up-front costs, such as purchasing network equipment and/or investing time in establishing a private network infrastructure. Instead, by utilizing cloud computing resources, users are able redirect their resources to focus on core enterprise functions.
In today's communication networks, examples of cloud computing services that a user may utilize include software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) technologies. SaaS is a delivery model that provides software as a service, rather than as an end product. Instead of utilizing a local network or individual software installations, software is typically licensed on a subscription basis, hosted on a remote machine, and accessed as needed. For example, users are generally able to access a variety of enterprise and/or information technology (IT) related software via a web browser. PaaS acts an extension of SaaS that goes beyond providing software services by offering customizability and expandability features to meet a user's needs. For example, PaaS can provide a cloud-based developmental platform for users to develop, modify, manage and/or customize applications and/or automate enterprise operations—without maintaining network infrastructure and/or allocating computing resources normally associated with these functions.
The so-called “Internet of Things” (IOT) is growing rapidly. The amount of data available from IOT devices is also increasing rapidly, and there are no standard mechanisms in place to interface with the growing number of devices that are being made “smart” or “Internet ready.” Broadband Internet is omnipresent for today's enterprise organizations, and the use of network-enabled devices with sensors and control options are ever increasing. For example, historically simple devices such as a thermostat, video recorder, fan control, or security system are now commonly connected to the Internet. In turn, some of these devices have communication and control capabilities. These capabilities are typically accessed using applications that may execute on a laptop computer or phone, which have been specifically written to interface with such devices. These applications are typically custom built for a particular IOT device and allow specific functionality tailored to the capabilities of the specific IOT device for which the application was designed. Although these applications allow end users some control, they do not scale very well for an enterprise environment that may have hundreds of IOT devices across the enterprise. Further, existing devices do not provide any mechanism for integrating their communication applications (or their raw inputs and outputs) into a large scale application environment.
In general, current IOT solutions are not integrated into existing workflows of a company and cannot be utilized effectively to derive decisions. For example, some IOT devices may send a large set of sensor data, only a subset of which can be used or actioned. Some IOT devices can understand actions but are not very programmable, so they require remote control of these actions. IOT devices may also run fragmented versions of software because of their inability to receive software updates “over the air.” IOT devices are often in physically unreachable (or difficult to reach) places but are connected to the network. This makes it difficult to physically update them, even though they continue to send/receive data. IOT devices communicate through a wide range of protocols (e.g., Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MATT), sockets, etc.) and there is presently no standard way to communicate with a server platform or other IOT devices.
This disclosure addresses these and other issues, in part by providing a standardized interface to IOT devices that may be integrated into the IOT devices at time of manufacture, such that it is available for use and may assist with initial startup and configuration of the IOT device once it has come online (e.g., been placed into service). This standardized interface may also allow for integration of IOT devices into enterprise-level applications, such as those made available from cloud-based service providers. Virtual IOT devices are also disclosed to facilitate communication with future or temporarily unavailable real world devices.